The town, originally called Beodericsworth,[3] was built on a grid pattern by Abbot Baldwin around 1080.[4] It is known for brewing and malting (Greene King brewery)[5] and for a British Sugar processing factory, where Silver Spoon sugar is produced. The town is the cultural and retail centre for West Suffolk and tourism is a major part of the economy.

The name Bury is etymologically connected with borough,[6] which has cognates in other Germanic languages such as the German "burg" meaning "fortress, castle"; Old Norse "borg" meaning "wall, castle"; and Gothic "baurgs" meaning "city".[7] They all derive from Proto-Germanic*burgs meaning "fortress". This in turn derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *bhrgh meaning "fortified elevation", with cognates including Welshbera ("stack") and Sanskritbhrant- ("high, elevated building"). There is thus no justification for the folk etymology stating that the Cathedral Town was so called because St Edmund was buried there.

The second section of the name refers to Edmund King of the East Angles, who was killed by the Vikings in the year 869. He became venerated as a saint and a martyr, and his shrine made Bury St Edmunds an important place of pilgrimage.

The formal name of both the borough and the diocese is "St Edmundsbury". Local residents often refer to Bury St Edmunds simply as "Bury".

Bury St Edmunds (Beodericsworth, Bedrichesworth, St Edmund's Bury), supposed by some[who?] to have been the Villa Faustina of the Romans, was one of the royal towns of the Saxons.[citation needed]Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here about 633, which in 903 became the burial place of King Edmund, who was slain by the Danes in 869, and owed most of its early celebrity to the reputed miracles performed at the shrine of the martyr king. The town grew around Bury St Edmunds Abbey, a site of pilgrimage. By 925 the fame of St Edmund had spread far and wide, and the name of the town was changed to St Edmund's Bury.

In 942 or 945 King Edmund had granted to the abbot and convent jurisdiction over the whole town, free from all secular services, and Canute in 1020 freed it from episcopal control. Edward the Confessor made the abbot lord of the franchise. Sweyn, in 1020, having destroyed the older monastery and ejected the secular priests, built a Benedictine abbey on St Edmund's Bury.[8] Count Alan Rufus is said to have been interred at Bury St Edmunds Abbey in 1093. In the 12th and 13th centuries the head of the de Hastings family, who held the Lordship of the Manor of Ashill in Norfolk, was hereditary Steward of this abbey.[9]

On 18 March 1190, two days after the more well-known massacre of Jews at Clifford Tower in York, the people of Bury St Edmunds massacred 57 Jews.[10][11] Later that year, Abbot Samson successfully petitioned King Richard I for permission to evict the town's remaining Jewish inhabitants "on the grounds that everything in the town... belonged by right to St Edmund: therefore, either the Jews should be St Edmund’s men or they should be banished from the town."[12] This expulsion predates the Edict of Expulsion by 100 years. In 1198, a fire burned the shrine of St Edmund, leading to the inspection of his corpse by Abbot Samson and the translation of St Edmund's body to a new location in the abbey.[12]

The town is associated with Magna Carta. In 1214 the barons of England are believed to have met in the Abbey Church and sworn to force King John to accept the Charter of Liberties, the document which influenced the creation of the Magna Carta,[8] a copy of which was displayed in the town's cathedral during the 2014 celebrations. By various grants from the abbots, the town gradually attained the rank of a borough.

Henry III in 1235 granted to the abbot two annual fairs, one in December (which still survives) and the other the great St Matthew's fair, which was abolished by the Fairs Act of 1871.[8] In 1327, the Great Riot occurred, in which the local populace led an armed revolt against the Abbey.[13] The burghers were angry at the overwhelming power, wealth and corruption of the monastery, which ran almost every aspect of local life with a view to enriching itself.[citation needed] The riot destroyed the main gate and a new, fortified gate was built in its stead.[13] However, in 1381 during the Great Uprising, the Abbey was sacked and looted again.[citation needed] This time, the Prior was executed; his severed head was placed on a pike in the Great Market.[citation needed] On 11 April 1608 a great fire broke out in Eastgate Street, which resulted in 160 dwellings and 400 outhouses being destroyed.[13]

The town developed into a flourishing cloth-making town, with a large woollen trade, by the 14th century.[13] In 1405 Henry IV granted another fair.[8]

Elizabeth I in 1562 confirmed the charters which former kings had granted to the abbots. The reversion of the fairs and two markets on Wednesday and Saturday were granted by James I in fee farm to the corporation. James I in 1606 granted a charter of incorporation with an annual fair in Easter week and a market. James granted further charters in 1608 and 1614, as did Charles II in 1668 and 1684.[8]

Parliaments were held in the borough in 1272, 1296 and 1446, but the borough was not represented until 1608, when James I conferred on it the privilege of sending two members.[8] The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 reduced the representation to one.[8]

The town council was formed in 2003.[20] The election on 3 May 2007 was won by the "Abolish Bury Town Council" party.[21] The party lost its majority following a by-election in June 2007 and, to date, the Town Council is still in existence.[22] In March 2008 a further by-election put Conservatives in control but in the council election of May 2011 the lack of Conservative and other parties' candidates let in a Labour majority before the election was even held.[23] By 2013 a number of by-elections put Conservatives in control again[24] but in the 2015 election Conservatives won 14 of the 17 vacancies.[25]

Near the Abbey Gardens stands Britain's first internally illuminated street sign, the Pillar of Salt which was built in 1935. The sign is at the terminus of the A1101, Great Britain's lowest road.

There is a network of tunnels which are evidence of chalk-workings,[26] though there is no evidence of extensive tunnels under the town centre. Some buildings have inter-communicating cellars. Due to their unsafe nature the chalk-workings are not open to the public, although viewing has been granted to individuals. Some have caused subsidence within living memory, for instance at Jacqueline Close.[27]

Bury St Edmunds has one of the full-time fire stations run by Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service. Originally located in the Traverse (now the Halifax bank),[30] it moved to Fornham Road in 1953. The Fornham Road site (now Mermaid Close) closed in 1987 and the fire station moved to its current location on Parkway North.[31]

Since March 2015, Bury St Edmunds has been the home town of the London and South East Regional Divorce Unit and the Maintenance Enforcement Business Centre (for issues with maintenance payments outside Greater London). The former processes divorce documents from across London and South East England as one of five centralised units covering the United Kingdom. Both units are based with Bury St Edmunds County Court in Triton House, St Andrews Street North.[citation needed]

Bury is located in the middle of an undulating area of East Anglia known as the East Anglian Heights, with land to the East and West of the town rising to above 100 metres (328 feet), though parts of the town itself are as low as 30 metres (98 feet) above sea level where the Rivers Lark and Linnet pass through it.

There are two Met office reporting stations in the vicinity of Bury St Edmunds, Brooms Barn (elevation 76m), 6.5 miles to the west of the town centre, and Honington (elevation 51m), about 6.5 miles to the north. According to Usman Majeed, head of Honington, it ceased weather observations in 2003, though Brooms Barn remains operational. Brooms Barn's record maximum temperature stands at 36.7C (98.1F), recorded in August 2003.[32] The lowest recent temperature was −10.0C (14.0f)[33] during December 2010.

Rainfall is generally low, at under 600mm, and spread fairly evenly throughout the year.

St James' parish church became Bury St Edmunds Cathedral when the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich was formed in 1914. The cathedral was extended with an eastern end in the 1960s. A new Gothic revival cathedral tower was built as part of a Millennium project running from 2000 to 2005. The opening for the tower took place in July 2005, and included a brass band concert and fireworks. Parts of the cathedral remain uncompleted, including the cloisters and some areas remain inaccessible to the public due to building work. The tower makes St Edmundsbury the only recently completed Anglican cathedral in the UK and was constructed using original fabrication techniques by six masons who placed the machine pre-cut stone individually as they arrived.

St Mary's Church is the civic church of Bury St Edmunds and the third largest parish church in England. It was part of the abbey complex and originally was one of three large churches in the town (the others being St James, now St Edmundsbury Cathedral, and St Margaret's, now gone). It is renowned for its magnificent hammer-beam "angel" roof, and is the final resting place of Mary Tudor, Queen of France, Duchess of Suffolk and favourite sister of Henry VIII. St Mary's is also home to the Chapel of the Suffolk and Royal Anglian Regiments.

The town holds a festival in May. This including concerts, plays, dance, and lecturers culminating in fireworks. Bury St Edmunds is home to England's oldest Scout group, 1st Bury St Edmunds (Mayors Own).

Another beer-related landmark is Britain's smallest public house, The Nutshell, which is on The Traverse, just off the marketplace. It is allegedly the smallest pub in Britain and also believed to be haunted.

Bury's largest landmark is the British Sugar factory near the A14, which processes sugar beet into refined crystal sugar. It was built in 1925 when the town's MP, Walter Guinness, was Minister of Agriculture, and for many of its early years was managed by Martin Neumann, former manager of a sugar beet refinery in Šurany, then part of Czechoslovakia. Neumann was invited by the British government to oversee the refinement of sugar in Bury St Edmunds and, with his family, immigrated to the United Kingdom.

Dickens plaque at The Angel Hotel.

The refinery processes beet from 1,300 growers. 660 lorry-loads of beet can be accepted each day when beet is being harvested. Not all the beet can be crystallised immediately, and some is kept in solution in holding tanks until late spring and early summer, when the plant has spare crystallising capacity. The sugar is sold under the Silver Spoon name (the other major British brand, Tate & Lyle, is made from imported sugar cane). By-products include molassed sugar beet feed for cattle and LimeX70, a soil improver. The factory has its own power station,[41] which powers around 110,000 homes. A smell of burnt starch from the plant is noticeable on some days.[42]

Bury St Edmunds is the main town of the non-metropolitan district St Edmundsbury. The council's main offices are located in the West Suffolk House, located in the town. Bury is also the main town of the Westminster parliamentary constituency also named Bury St Edmunds. Since becoming a single-seat constituency in 1885 it has always returned ConservativeMPs. The current representative, Jo Churchill, was first elected in the 2015 General Election.[44]

At present Suffolk County Council operates a two-tier school system. However, state education in Bury St Edmunds and its catchment area form a three-tier system. On 17 February 2014, Suffolk County Council announced that its cabinet would be advised to recommend moving 20 schools in the town from three-tier to a two-tier system – including the closure of four middle schools.[58] Under the recommendations, Hardwick, Howard, St James and St Louis middle schools will all close under the changes, which will have been fully implemented by September 2016.[58]

The main interchange for bus and coach services for Bury St Edmunds is the bus and coach station, located on St Andrews Street North in the town centre. Bus services link the town centre with the main residential housing areas of the town. From November 2012 Sunday bus services were introduced over some of these routes. There are regular bus services to the neighbouring towns of Brandon, Cambridge, Diss, Haverhill, Ipswich, Mildenhall, Newmarket, Stowmarket, Sudbury and Thetford and many of the villages in between. The daily National Express coach services between Victoria Coach Station in London and Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft stop at the town's bus and coach station, as does the cross country service between Clacton-on-Sea and Liverpool which travels via Cambridge, Peterborough, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester.